Science and social activities in beautiful Zürich!

In the first week of April the PhD students and their supervisors met at the University of Zürich. On April 3 we had the mid-term evaluation of the project with our project officer from the Commission, Ivan Ginga. The students presented their PhD projects and we discussed both scientific and administrative aspects of the project. Thanks to Ivan for valuable feedback to both students and supervisors.

On April 4 and 5 the students followed the scientific course “The Journey from Hit Discovery to Market” . The entire drug discovery process was discussed from hit discovery to lead generation and then the journey from there through medicinal chemistry, scale-up, property measurements, cell based and mechanistic assays through to animal studies, clinical trials and clinical approval. Inspiring lectures were given by Rainer, Marcel, Vincent and Karl, and as a bonus a lecture given by Dr. Fabrice Gallou from Novartis gave an industrial perspective on process chemistry. The students were also given the opportunity to do group assignments where they demonstrated that they were able to translate the theoretical knowledge into practice.

Thank you to Karl for hosting us, and for being such a remarkable city guide!